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Help:Editing
Absolute beginners? If you can type and click, you can edit most pages on this wiki. #'Find a page to improve'. (If you want, you can practice in the Sandbox first. It's there for "practicing", or experimenting with almost anything. It's a good place to get used to how the wiki works.) #'Click "Edit this page"'. #An "edit box" will open - type your new sentences or corrections (just like MS or Lotus or WordPerfect wordprocessing) #'Click the "Save" button' - (well, it may be wise to hit the "Preview" button first, in case of mistakes!) #'You're now a Web Publisher. Welcome to the team!' More detail As with all wikis, you can edit any unprotected page on this Wikia. Just click the edit" button that appears near the top of every page. Your changes to the page will be visible immediately after clicking "publish," the button to the far right of the screen. Explain your edit in the "Summary" box, next to the edit window and below the submit and preview buttons. eg: "Correcting a typo," or "added information to section X." Be as descriptive as possible, so it is easy to know what the intent of the edit is. If you are logged in, you can mark an edit as minor by checking the tiny Minor edit checkbox above the summary box to let people know your edit is not something substantive. This would be good for when minor grammar errors are being corrected, etc. Use the "Preview" button, found next to the edit button, to view your existing edits. This may be useful for spotting typos, checking format, etc. and is best used before publishing each article. To try editing, click here. This is the sandbox, an editing testing area. Clicking the 'edit' button allows you to edit the page, just like any other. Upon editing, you can preview your edits and submit them. These edits will be erased eventually, however, to keep the page from becoming too much of a mess. Formatting Most text formatting is usually done with the wiki markup, so you don't have to learn HTML. However, to leave this help section complete, as much HTML as could be required will be listed here. HTML HTML is generally necessary when coding an infobox template. An example of an infobox template can be seen to the right. }} |- valign="top" | align="center" colspan=2 bgcolor=" }" style="border-bottom:0px solid gray; font-size:larger; color:white;" | } |- | style="text-align: left; border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" width="80pt" | Example: | style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | } |- valign="top" |} An infobox should begin with }} |- valign="top" | align="center" colspan=2 bgcolor=" }" style="border-bottom:0px solid gray; font-size:larger; color:white;" | } |- | style="text-align: left; border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" width="80pt" | Example: | style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | } |- valign="top" | style="text-align: left; border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" width="80pt" | Example: | style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | } |} Next comes cellspacing and cellpadding. These change how far apart each line is away from each other, and how far apart the infobox is away from text. The higher the number, the more space will be left between them. Next is style"float: This can be set to right or right. All infoboxes thus far on this Wikia are set to style="float:right, and thus, almost all infoboxes should be set to this same orientation, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. This is followed by margin: 0 0 These numbers can both be set to any value, but to have effect, the number must be followed immediately by px. The first number, when modified, will move the box up or down. The second number, when modified, will move the box left or right. 5em 1em; follows, and then width:(insert number here)px The normal width is 250px. This statistic, of course, changes the width of the infobox. This is followed by background:#(insert FFFFFF color here, such as d7f8e1); This decides what the color of the main background of the infobox is. Inserting any color value here will make the infobox background that color. of current, this section is unfinished, and will be finished at a later point in time. Bold and italics Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('): *''italics'' is rendered as italics. (2 apostrophes on each side). Use this for scientific names (NOT for countries) and emphasis. *'bold' is rendered as bold. (3 apostrophes on each side). Use this for filetypes and the first sentence at the top of a page. *''bolded italics'' is rendered as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on each side) Headings and subheadings Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up your article by inserting a heading for each section. Headings can be created like this: * Main heading (2 equals signs) * Subheading (3 equals signs) * Another level down (4 equals signs) * Another level down (5 equals signs) If an article has at least three headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. Try creating some headings in the Sandbox and see the effect on the TOC. Stubs, candidates for deletion, etc. Several templates on this website, including the main stub template, can have 'reasons' added to them for their addition to a page. While it is optional for stub notices to have reasons, candidates for deletion should always have a reason why they are a candidate for deletion. Reasons can be set to templates that have the option like this... Indenting To indent text, place a colon (:) right at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph. For example: This is aligned all the way to the left. ::This is indented slightly. :::This is indented more. is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left. :This is indented slightly. ::This is indented more. Bullet points To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to rectal indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation. A brief example: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second :*Isn't this fun? Which is shown as: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second Numbered lists You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#). Using more #s will affect the level of indenting. Example: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Shows up as: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Links Links are important on wikis to help readers navigate your site. Internal links You can extensively cross-reference wiki pages using internal links. You can add links to existing titles, and also to titles you think ought to exist in future. To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets. For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the Main Page, it would be: :Main Page If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name by adding it after a pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards). For example, if you wanted to make a link to the Main Page, but wanted it to say "home page" you would write it as such: :View the home page... It would appear as: :View the home page... When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets. For example, you would write: :The man was attacked by a pack of Velociraptors. It would appear as: :The man was attacked by a pack of Velociraptors. (the link will be red if this page does not yet exist) Interwiki links To link to another Wikia, you can use its title followed by a colon and the article name, instead of using the full URL. For example, the Creatures Wiki home page is at Creatures:Main Page, which can be typed as :Creatures:Main Page :rather than as http://creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page This style of link works for any wiki in the interwiki map, not just for Wikia. See the Central Wikia page at Wikia:Help:Interwiki link. External links If you want to link to a site outside of Wikia, you may just type the full URL for the page you want to link to. :http://www.google.com/ It is often more useful to make the link display something other than the URL, so use one square bracket at each end, with the alternative title after the full URL address, separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as Google search engine, just type: :Google search engine Redirects To redirect automatically from one page to another, type #REDIRECT and then put in brackets the name of the page to be redirected to. For example, you could redirect from "Cats" to "Cat". That way, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Cat". Wiki variables and templates Use to see the current Wikia. For instance, on this site prints out as . That and a few other templates are common to MediaWiki sites. Check the current list of all templates on this Wikia. You can create templates. After you create the page Template:XXX, using the command will include that content in your current page. So, if you have something that needs to be included on many other pages, you might want to use a template. Most templates available on the Central Wikia can be used on individual wikia with just "wikia:" prefixed to the name. See the help page on Central at Wikia:Help:Shared templates. Editing